Sonic Mule’s Ocarina Climbs ‘Stairway to Heaven’

A quintet of nerds are gathered in a contemplative circle on a carpet. They slowly begin play Led Zeppelin’s seminal epic "Stairway to Heaven" — on their iPhones. It is either the coolest thing I have ever seen, or the geekiest.

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Maybe it’s both.

Although a guitar is needed — isn’t it always? — the nerds play the song’s memorable flute lines by breathing into their iPhones using Sonic Mule’s musical application Ocarina, so named for the ancient instrument that predated the flute by thousands of years. It’s a pretty sweet app, and further explodes the possibilities of what the cell phone can become in our still-new millennium.

Ocarina lets you play using diatonic, minor and harmonic scales, while its Zeldarian mode allows you to modulate the pitch of your voice. Putting the two options together would further rock, but it’s still early in the game for that, no doubt. But Ocarina is also a social application: One tap of a button and you can see who else in the world is fondling Apple’s’ four-fingered flute.

While I personally wouldn’t want AT&T anywhere near my phone records, it is getting harder and harder to say no to the iPhone. Should I cave?